Forgive

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go
to another one.

- How to Be Perfect by Ron Padgett

Anxiety

Man, I'm such an asshole. I'm
such an asshole. I'm such
an asshole. Or am I? Anxiety
is just a matter of thinking
for too long
about yourself.

- The Drama of the Gifted Hansel by Debora Libov

1933

Before Herman Weinbach died, he told Andrzej Szczerba that being a Communist homosexual Jew in Iowa in 1933 was like being a European starling that spoke two languages.
Andrzej did not know what Herman meant when he said that, but I believe he meant it was something beautiful and wonderful.

- GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE BY ANDREW SMITH

Show Off

I was a very shy child who loved to show off.

- KATHERINE PATERSON

Tarnished

I feel dirty. I feel tarnished. I feel befouled. Perhaps it is true that all that happens is in accordance with Your will, and thus it is good. But sometimes You leave blood on Your instruments.

- MURDER MYSTERIES BY NEIL GAIMAN

Chronicle

Well, I think people who narrate stories tend to be naturally introspective, because the rest of people are busy out, like, living their lives, rather than obsessively trying to chronicle life.

- JOHN GREEN

True

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

- ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Belief

...the nights belonged to his own religion, the one he made up for himself, a strange, multicolored pantheon...in which all mythologies existed simultaneously in a magnificent anarchy of belief.

- ONE LIFE, FURNISHED IN EARLY MOORCOCK BY NEIL GAIMAN

Eccentric

Don't be insulting just because you want to act like an eccentric.

- A MOVEABLE FEAST BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Bubble

I live in the bubble that is Ian. Sometimes I get to school and find out my socks don't match.

- GEMINI BITES BY PATRICK RYAN

Matter

Nothing matters but knowing nothing matters / It's just life / So keep dancing through

- DANCING THROUGH LIFE FROM WICKED

Fall

...remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.

- THE CRUCIBLE BY ARTHUR MILLER

Film

Why am I witness / And when I capture it on film / Will it mean that it's the end / And I'm alone?

- HALLOWEEN FROM RENT
 

Sin

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.

- OSCAR WILDE

Innocence

What Fats wanted to recover was a kind of innocence, and the route he had chosen back to it was through all the things that were supposed to be bad for you, but which, paradoxically, seemed to Fats to be the one true way to authenticity; to a kind of purity.

- THE CASUAL VACANCY BY JK ROWLING

Invisibility

I am the boy / That can enjoy / Invisibility

- ULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE

Obsession

Don't bend; don't water down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

- FRANZ KAFKA

Support

Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

- STEPHEN KING

Four

I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

- FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY